The 5 Stages of Weight Loss

As with many things in life, we go through change in stages. Weight loss is no different.

Successful weight loss is about changing your lifestyle. That’s just another way of saying you need to change your behaviors.

The stages of behavior change have been studied in depth. Below is my take on the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (I know, fancy wording), and how it corresponds to successful weight loss. What stage are you in?

Pre-contemplation

In the first of 5 stages of weight loss, people have no intention of changing their lifestyle. They either don’t think there’s a problem, or they’re happy just the way things are.

In this stage, people rationalize their lack of action. They may think to themselves “losing weight is too much work” or “life is good just the way it is” or “I don’t need to lose weight to be happy“.

Or you could even put down other fitness enthusiasts’ lifestyles to make you feel better about your own. The point is that the resistance to change is very strong in this stage.

The good news? If you’re reading this article, you more than likely have made it past this phase and into one of the next phases.

Contemplation

Contemplation is the 2nd phase of the 5 stages of weight loss. It’s also the stage that the majority of people wanting to lose weight are in. And unfortunately, a lot of people get stuck in this phase.

It’s in this phase that you make a conscious decision to make an effort towards either losing weight or changing your lifestyle. Maybe you know what to do, or maybe you don’t have a clue, but you’re usually seeking out information to try to figure it out. You very well might be in this stage right now.

The contemplation stage is where you figure out your “why” for wanting to lose weight. It’s what creates that initial burst of motivation and gets the momentum moving forward.

Preparation

In stage 3 you feel like the risk/reward ratio for taking action is about equal. In other words, you feel like it’s not out of your reach to make a positive lifestyle change, and the effort will match the reward. You no longer feel hopeless.

It’s also the phase where you start outlining a plan to take action. You may even start making some small behavioral changes like drinking more water, going for walks, joining a gym, or hiring a coach.

Moving from the contemplation phase to the preparation phase is a big deal. You’ve successfully sorted out all the confusing and conflicting information that’s out there, and you’re ready to set a plan in motion.

The preparation phase is also one of the most important phases. It arms you with the knowledge and expectations that lead to successful change. Be careful here though. It’s very common to overanalyze things and become frozen with perfection. Analysis paralysis is very real.

Action

Stage 4 of the 5 stages of weight loss is one of the most difficult. It’s the phase where many people make it to, but end up failing and relapsing back to the 1st or 2nd phase. The action phase is where you set goals and start taking action on the plan you’ve laid out for yourself. It’s one of the most difficult phases because it’s when you are actively changing your bad habits and replacing them with good ones.

It’s the time when you’re repairing your relationship with food, the scale, and your body. It’s the time where you’re questioning if you have what it takes to do this for the rest of your life. It’s when you’re relying on willpower to keep you going until those new habits are formed.

You have to fight all the naysayers that don’t support your changes, and you have to deal with all your inner struggles. The action phase lasts about 6 months, and if you can consistently maintain your lifestyle change for these 6 months, you have likely made a lasting change in your life.

Maintenance

In the final stage of weight loss, you have successfully changed the majority of your bad habits and have lived a healthy and active lifestyle full of whole foods and exercise for over six continuous months. It’s in this stage that you start thinking about your life differently.

Suddenly, that bad food you had such an emotional attachment to doesn’t sound so appealing. In fact, you have no intention of engaging in that behavior ever again. You know how harmful that was to you, and eating healthy food makes you feel so much better than the temporary happiness emotional eating provided.

Your confidence levels are sky high, and your body has undergone a complete transformation, both on the inside and out. People (including the original non-supporters) are now complimenting you on your weight loss and asking you how you did it.

Congratulations, you have successfully changed your life for the better, and living this new healthy lifestyle is just as easy to do as living the unhealthy one was in the past. You might mess up here or there, but the default corrective action is now a healthy one.

So, what stage are you in? Are you making plans to move up into one of the next stages of weight loss?

47 Comments

Tony Schober

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that if you need more help losing weight you can download my ebook The 10 Forgotten Rules of Weight Loss absolutely free.

Great article. One thing I would add to the maintenance stage would be the sometimes challenging, sometimes motivating, feelings of regret, anger and astonishment that you spent so many years smoking, sitting on the couch, eating processed, nutrient-depleted food and hating your body. As you note, those days and that lifestyle when you reach the maintenance phase thankfully start to feel very foreign–in fact, downright bizarre….almost like that was a part of your life lived by different person!

I’d agree with Ian… and also that maintenance phasers can also fall back, sometimes all the way to step 1 and it’s important to know that because it can catch you by surprise to have accomplished so much and then feel completely unmotivated with no idea what to do when the bad habits come creeping back in…

Hi Debi, you’re right – it very well is possible to slip back to another phase. In fact, the progression through the stages isn’t linear. It’s a constant push forward followed by a slight regression. As for the maintenance phase, according to the Theoretical Model of Behavioral Change, being in the maintenance phase for a period of 5 years significantly reduces your chances of regression.

Hey Chris, some form of relapse is almost a given along the transition through the stages. I think that knowing this going into a lifestyle change will help you keep moving forward when that time comes. Being prepared helps keep you from getting discouraged.

Know it’s not a straight line, just like weight loss isn’t a straight line either. I think it’s all about getting your mind right and managing expactations.

hello coach…I am from India..and I follow your post regularly.I had recently shed 30 pound by following your advise…and I have one question …after workout I feel very dull and lethargic ..how would I increase my energy level during and after workout..and how would I increase my strength during workout….thank you

Hi Atul, try having a carb/protein meal both before and after your workout. It sounds like you are low on glycogen. In addition, make sure your calories aren’t too low the rest of the day.

That should take care of the nutrition aspect of your training. However, you still need to make sure you’re structuring your workout program in way that manages progressive overload if you want to keep getting stronger.

It can be hard, but the longer you stick with it, the lower your odds of going back to your old ways. The more repetitions you get in of the behaviors you want in your life, the more likely they are to become habits.

addiction is addiction, the biggest part of drug addiction is habit. the detox stage where your body goes through the physical withdrawal of whatever substance only lasts about 72 hours. the rest is behavior and attitude changes, the same with food except you probably don’t get physical withdrawal from lack of saturated fat.

Couldn’t agree more about the stages, went thru them all. But…in the maintenance stage, one should also be aware of the “guilt stage”. That is, when you get used to working out and for some reason you can’t…i.e. travel, sick, have to work late, bad weather.. then you REALLY feel guilty. As working out is now such an important part of your life that you really do feel the guilt. Same thing with diet. You may go out to eat or are invited over to friend’s for dinner, and while you bend to peer pressure to have that “death by chocolate” dessert, you feel guilty about it later. Any yet, when you look around the room, you KNOW you can afford it more than anyone else can, so it does help ease it a bit. But then again, in your mind you are thinking of how much more time in the gym or dieting you will have to do to make up for it.

Getting in shape is really a life changing event. You really won’t believe how good you feel and how many people notice. I have people come up to me all the time and tell me that I look great. I simply say “Thank you, I appreciate the compliment”..and many times even blush. While my wife just rolls her eyes now. But inside I’m saying…”Yea, it’s all worth it!”.

Maintenance. After losing 30 pounds and 6 sizes , I will continue strength training and cardio maintenance forever. I will not go backwards, I Got This. Thank you for all of your blogs and links; they are so helpful.

I have done fat loss programme for about 2 months now and eat clean most of the time but cannot lose belly fat, with good food regime, and weight lifting classes, what is next best thing to add into my workout programme to try and shift this fat??? but my problem is i am tall and thin and dont wanna end up looking anorexic…..cheers

Thanks for the article Tony, I’ve lost 50 pounds, I went through all of the stages. I am happy to say I am in the maintenance stage and am really enjoying finding new ways to challenge myself for my lifelong fitness goals. Your posts always give me tips to stay on track.

I am almost at my goal weight, but I have been maintaining the same healthy lifestyle for over 6 months and almost 50lbs loss. It is definitely a lot of work and sometimes I struggle with overly restricting myself which then causes guilt when I do indulge in mini size snickers or whatever else. How do you get to a stage where do you find that balance especially when entering the maintanance stage? My goal is to have a good relationship with food and not call it “good” or “bad” and of course be healthy overall without yo-yoing.

Hi Raquel, I like to work on that balance right from the start so that you avoid that very situation you’re talking about. The goal is to do more of the behaviors and to practice more of the mindset you want in your life.

50lbs is a lot in 6 months. I would take it a little slower and work on the mindset that’s going to be needed to maintain all that weight loss you’ve worked so hard for.

You said you overly restrict yourself. Why not try to include a more moderate eating style, both in the quantity and the quality of your food? Something like 80-90% whole foods and then planning on eating the rest of your food guilt free.

As a 67 year old female who has lost 90 pounds this year and has maintained my loss for the last 3 months my only regret is that I didn’t change my eating and lifestyle habits years ago.
My daughter who has been doing this with me has also ost 80 pounds. I can see the changes in her physical appearance and energy levels even more clearly than my own. We have decided that we have no desire to return to what we were only a year ago.
Thank you to MFP for helping us on this journey

I think there should be a Stage 6, the totally frustrated and angered that you are doing EVERYTHING you should be doing with little or no results. This stage for me has lasted almost 2 years.

Up to about 2 years ago, I relaxed the dieting rules when I go on holiday and up until then, within a few weeks of eating healthy again, I have usually lost the 2 kilos I put on.
Since then, NOTHING I do helps and I cannot lose the extra 2 kilos and have put on another 2 kilos as well.

I am very frustrated an saddened because the conclusion I have come to is that the ONLY way I can lose weight and keep it off permanently, is to starve myself everyday 24/7 and NEVER EVER LET UP! Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I just cannot do this. 500 calories per day is just not enough for me, I can manage, just about, 2 days like this, but I cannot do this everyday.

Going back to a normal diet of 1200 to 1500 hasn’t proved any better either. I’ve even tried a maximum of 1000 calories per day. I seem to lose a few pounds at the beginning of the week and then gain it at the weekend when I relax a little. When I relax, I don’t gorge myself on McDonalds or anything, I just eat a little more, like what I should eat to MAINTAIN my weight, which for me GAINS IT.

I’ve decreased calories and increased calories. I’ve exercised more, I’ve exercised less and I eat very healthily. I’ve tried the 5:2 diet and it hasn’t worked any better than anything else I have tried. I lose weight yes on the days I fast, on the days I don’t I gain it back, even though I only consume between 1200 and 1500 calories per day which is what I should be consuming for my height, weight and age. I exercise about 6 hours a week and eat plenty of fruit, vegetables, fibre and protein and eat red meat minimally. The only way I can lose weight and keep it off these days is to totally starve myself and then I only lose at the very best 400g per week, but it goes back on immediately.

4 years ago I gave up smoking and made an effort to lose weight and I lost a whopping 13 kilos. Since then it has been a STRUGGLE to keep the weight off. I’ve slowly gained back 4 kilos! How I don’t know, because I haven’t changed my calorific intake. So what is the problem? Do I have to accept that this is it for me and unless I want to STARVE, I will never lose weight again.

I am not a skinny girl, I am an average height of 5ft 6″, large boned and I am 56 years old and weigh 82 kilos. Everything I read says I should be at the very heaviest, around 70 kilos. I can’t even lose 4 kilos, never mind another 12! On the whole, I am happy with myself, I wear a size 14 dress, this is average and I don’t look out of proportion, the only area I hate about my body is my stomach. But hey, I’ll just have to wear lycra from now on, as nothing else is working. Any suggestions?

Hi Nadja, what you are experiencing is actually part of Stage 4 – action phase. The maintenance phase is almost entirely made up of maintained behavioral change – both physical and mental.

Right now you are still experimenting a lot with calories and your mindset isn’t quite where it needs to be to have achieved transformation.

People in the maintenance phase tend to not focus much on calories anymore. They use it here or there as a tool, but they don’t rely on it. Instead, they’ve learned how to eat in a more habitual way that keeps them at their goal. They define progress not so much anymore by how they look, but by how they feel and their overall health. They’re at peace with who they are.

Since you are still trying to get the numbers right, here are a couple articles that could help:

Hi. I’m 42 and I’ve had weight issues all my life. I have been through all the stages…making it to stage 5 at least twice but something or the other including 3 pregnancies catapults me back to stage 1…even a zero when there’s total apathy (I feel terrible but I can hardly make myself change a thing) Right now I’m at stage 4..for the umpteenth time..even though I’m getting slow but steady results I’m really tired and frustrated with my repeated failures..its too difficult. I’m terrified of failing again. How do I ensure it doesn’t happen??!!

Hi Nosheen, make sure the behaviors that are part of your life in stage 4 are doable for the rest of your life.

A lot of people mistake stage 4 as stage 5. They are losing weight but they’re still stuck in a dieting/day-to-day weight loss mindset. In stage 5 you don’t really think about weight loss. That happens in the background.

So make sure how you’re eating and how you’re working out are sustainable. Make sure you’re doing it for the joy it brings you in the moment instead of some potential result in the future.

I guess I was just confused about your fasting question, as this article is about the 5 stages of weight loss and I don’t promote fasting. If you’re following a particular intermittent fasting protocol then you might be better served going right to the source and asking. Personally, I don’t think it’s a problem, but I’m also not an all-or-nothing kind of person.